Chapter XII · (continued 2)

In the midst of his studies, his tutorships, and his passages of arms with the Cornificians, twelve years slipped away, at the end of which time John of Salisbury found himself possessed of a vast fund of erudition[166] and an empty purse. The latter circumstance was not one which greatly disquieted him, for his theory was that the keys which opened the door of philosophy were not of gold, but consisted of poverty, humility, silence, and a quiet life, together with that detachment from family and worldly ties which is best found in a foreign land.[167] So little had he of the spirit of worldly ambition, that when in 1148 Peter des Celles, abbot of Moutier des Celles, offered him a chaplaincy in his monastery, he gladly accepted a post, which, however humble, gave him at least the leisure and the means to study. He remained in this retreat for the space of three years. Peter des Celles was one of the most remarkable men of his time, and has made himself best known by his epistles; for, like most of the literary personages of the twelfth century, he was a great letter writer. He had received his education in the monastic school of St. Martin des Champs, and does not seem to have been one whit behind the more fashionable students of Paris. “I had,” he writes, “an insatiable appetite for learning; my eyes were never tired of beholding books, or my ears of listening to them; yet with all my ardour, God was always the beginning, centre, and end of all my studies. They had but Him for their object, though indeed I studied everything, even law, without prejudice, however, to the duties of my state, attendance on the Divine Office, and my accustomed prayers.” This worthy inheritor of the genuine monastic spirit acted the part of a true father to our English scholar, who at last, through the favour of St. Bernard, obtained the post of secretary to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose household he renewed his acquaintance with two of his former fellow-students, Peter de Blois, and Thomas à Becket. Peter de Blois had been one of his pupils; a man of versatile talent, who had studied first at Tours, then at Paris, and lastly at Bologna, and had seen something of half the courts of Europe. He was equally skilled in law, medicine, and theology, but it is by his epistles that he is chiefly known, and his ready and somewhat gossiping pen has left us graphic sketches of the manners and customs of his time. He was, in fact, the Horace Walpole of the twelfth century, curious, fluent, and volatile. Henry II. made him archdeacon, first of Bath, and then of London, and often employed him as secretary, so that he had excellent opportunities for studying the court of our first Plantagenet sovereign, which he describes in a sufficiently amusing manner. He assures us that Henry’s court, from the conversation of learned men and the discussion of questions, was a daily school. The king, he says, is deeply versed in literature, and has more gifts of mind and body than he can so much as enumerate; nevertheless, he lets out the ugly fact that it is best not to go too near him when he is out of humour, as he is then more of a lion than a lamb, and is quite as likely as not to tear out your eyes. How any man of letters can ever attach himself to a court life is more than he can understand; and how any man, lettered or unlettered, could be brought to endure the daily miseries he describes, such as the eating of “mouldy bread and stale fish, wine that can only be drunk with the eyes shut, lodgings for which pigs would be ashamed to quarrel,” and days spent “without order, plan, or moderation of any kind,” must seem equally incomprehensible to his readers. But he has something more cheering to say of the household of Archbishop Theobald. It is crowded with learned men, who spend their time between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and examining causes. All the knotty questions of the kingdom are referred to them, and discussed in the common hall; and there is no sort of jealousy or contention, but the youngest present is listened to with courtesy and attention. In these letters Peter de Blois has a good deal to say On the subject of education. He tells us that in his youth he was trained, not in idle fables, but solid literature, and names Livy, Quintius Curtius, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus among the books then most commonly used in schools. He regards the new scholasticism with undisguised contempt: it is good, he says, neither at home nor abroad, neither in the church, the cloister, the camp, the court, or the bar. In fact, in his literary tastes he showed himself a worthy disciple of John of Salisbury.

Meanwhile the latter attached himself to the rising fortunes of St. Thomas, and dedicated to him, when chancellor, his two great works, the Polycraticon and the Metalogicon, the last of which is a formal apology for humane letters, and is considered to display an amount of learning and literary elegance far exceeding anything which had been produced since the days of Boëthius. When St. Thomas became primate, his friend continued to retain the office he had held under his predecessor, and never spared the archbishop the benefit of his frank and fearless advice. Among other things, he took on him to give him some directions with regard to his studies which are worth quoting, as showing the view taken at that time by spiritual men, of the danger resulting from an excessive application to law and logic. “My counsel is,” he says, “that you put off some of your other occupations, in order to give your whole mind to prayer. Laws and canons are all very well, but believe me, they nourish curiosity more than devotion.... Who ever rose from the study of law with a sentiment of compunction in his heart? Nay, I will say more, the exercises of the schools often increase knowledge till a man is puffed up with it, but they rarely inflame devotion. I would far rather that you meditated on the Psalms or read the ‘Morals of St. Gregory,’ than that you were learned in philosophy, after the fashion of the scholastics.” St. Thomas was not slow in taking his friend’s advice, and both at Canterbury and Pontigny often spent whole nights in the study of the Scriptures, and was wont always to carry a few pages in the loose sleeve of his tunic, that he might have them at hand whenever he found a leisure moment for reading.

We need not pursue further the history of John of Salisbury. The fidelity with which he adhered to the cause of St. Thomas exposed him to no small loss and personal danger, and after the martyrdom of the saint he had to fly from England, and taking refuge in France, became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, his election being entirely due to his personal merits, and the honour with which the French clergy regarded one who had been the companion of the Blessed Martyr. But before concluding our notice of the Parisian masters, it remains for us to name the three Peters, as they are called, who all illustrated the schools about the same period. The first was Peter Comestor, or the Eater—so called from his habit of devouring books—a very famous personage in his day, who became chancellor of Paris in 1164, but resigned all his dignities to put on the habit of the canons of St. Victor’s. His Historia Scholastica, or Epitome of Sacred History, was so much esteemed in the twelfth century, that portions of it were read in the churches. A namesake of his, called Peter the Chanter, was almost of equal fame. He too, after filling the eye of the public for several years, withdrew from their applause, and became a simple religious in the Abbey of Long-Pont, where he died in 1197.

Both were men of tried virtue, and showed themselves hostile to the sophists of the day, whose wranglings they declared to be opposed to the simplicity of the Gospel. But more renowned than either was the Italian scholar, Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, as he was called, and the real Father and founder of scholastic theology. He commenced his study of civil law at Bologna, and thence passed on to Paris, where he was admitted among the canons of St. Victor’s, and afterwards taught for some years in the cathedral school. In 1159 he became bishop of Paris, through the influence of his royal pupil, prince Philip, brother to the reigning king, Louis the Young. The king offered the bishopric to his brother, who was educated for the ecclesiastical state, but he nobly refused it in favour of his master. Peter Lombard’s great work was the celebrated Book of Sentences, consisting of a number of passages selected from the works of the fathers, and commented on in such a manner as to present the student with a body of theological doctrines systematically arranged. The convenience of finding every point of theology treated of in a precise and methodical order, and within the compass of a single volume, was speedily recognised, and the Book of the Sentences soon became the favourite text-book used in the schools, both for the lectures of the masters and the private study of their disciples. Hence the title of Sententiarus, which came to be applied to those who taught or studied the Sentences. Notwithstanding the immense popularity obtained by this work, it is said to contain several important omissions, and even some theological errors, one of which was formerly condemned by Pope Alexander III. Its importance is derived from the circumstance of its being the first attempt to reduce theology to a compact and orderly scientific system; and from this period we date the real rise of the science of scholastic theology.

It will have been observed that in what has been said up to this time of the schools of Paris, they have not been designated by the title of a university. For, in fact, as yet these schools had no claim to be regarded as a corporate body; they were accidents rather than an institution, and it was only gradually that they acquired a corporate character, and became possessed of a government, a head, and a body of laws and privileges. This change was effected by no sudden act of royal or ecclesiastical legislation; it developed itself insensibly but of the very necessity of the case. The immense number of masters and pupils who flocked to the capital, gave rise to disorders, which obliged the superiors of the different schools to unite together and agree to certain rules of common discipline.

Thus in 1195 we find a certain John, abbot of St. Albans, associated to the “body of elect masters.” Some years before, in the very thick of the quarrel between Henry II. and St. Thomas, occurs the first notice of that division of the scholars into nations or provinces, which formed one of the peculiarities of the university. Henry offered to choose as arbiters either the peers of France, the French clergy, or the heads of the different provinces in the school of Paris. We find also certain laws, or at least established customs having the force of laws, respecting the method to be observed in granting licenses for the opening of a school. It was the rule in all dioceses that no one could open a school without permission from the cathedral scholasticus, or chancellor of the diocese, who was bound to grant such licenses to all who were capable. Pope Alexander III., who showed a lively interest in everything that concerned the encouragement of education, ordered that such licenses should be granted gratuitously, but he afterwards permitted the Chancellor of Paris, who was at that time Peter Comestor, to exact a certain fine. It appears, also, that in Paris the chancellor or scholasticus of St. Geneviève shared this right with the chancellor of Notre Dame. There were also other laws, such as those which prohibited religious from teaching or studying in the schools of law or medicine. The two faculties, as they were called, of arts and theology, which formed the basis of the university, appear to have been already distinguished. Certain privileges, too, were already enjoyed by the students. They were beginning to claim the right of being tried only by the ecclesiastical tribunals, and this right was granted to them in 1194 by a decree of Celestine III. Alexander III. permitted clerics to retain their benefices whilst teaching or studying at Paris. Finally, in the year 1200, we find the existence of the university as a corporate body, governed by a head, acknowledged in the diploma of Philip Augustus, wherein, having confirmed the exemption of the scholars from the secular courts, he decreed that the head of the studies should, in particular, be incapable of arrest or punishment from the secular judge, and obliged every provost of the city on his entrance into office to swear to the observance of this decree.

From this time, therefore, we may properly date the formal recognition of the university of Paris, and passing over the obscurities in which its earlier commencements are involved, shall proceed to present our readers with a sketch of that institution as it existed in the palmy days of the thirteenth century.